All Discussions Tagged 'Eric' - Think Atheist2016-12-09T15:32:29Zhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/topic/listForTag?tag=Eric&feed=yes&xn_auth=noWhat do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2014-12-22:1982180:Topic:15065092014-12-22T03:23:29.284ZUnseenhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Unseen
<p>And now it's happening.</p>
<p>I changed the name of this thread to reflect a chant I found out this morning was used in a recent NYC protest march.</p>
<p>On Dec 20, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/12/new-york-police-shot-brooklyn-20141220222855288500.html" target="_blank">a black man walked up to a NYC squad car and executed the two cops inside</a>, who were on their lunch break. One had been married for just two months and the other was a father of two. <br></br> <br></br> I…</p>
<p>And now it's happening.</p>
<p>I changed the name of this thread to reflect a chant I found out this morning was used in a recent NYC protest march.</p>
<p>On Dec 20, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2014/12/new-york-police-shot-brooklyn-20141220222855288500.html" target="_blank">a black man walked up to a NYC squad car and executed the two cops inside</a>, who were on their lunch break. One had been married for just two months and the other was a father of two. <br/> <br/> I only mention the killer's race due to a poignant irony: the cops last names were Liu and Ramos. Yes, a Chinese and Hispanic last name. If he was hoping to kill a couple lily-white cops, he blew it bigtime.<br/> <br/> The perp was a guy with a big chip on his shoulder who had talked about killing cops on his Facebook page saying something along the lines of "For every one of ours (meaning, I guess, black men) we should take two of theirs (meaning white cops, I suppose)." He specifically referenced Michael Brown and Eric Garner.<br/> <br/> Now, while most protest leaders grant that most police are good folks with good intentions, the overall tone of the protests seems to be anti-police. <br/> <br/> Predictably, protests with any degree of anti-establishment or antiauthoritarian tone bring out the so-called anarchists who instigate violence and engage in random vandalism. They always use peaceful protests as cover for their antisocial fun.<br/> <br/> I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction here: there will be more murders of cops just going about their lawful business, and I wonder to what degree the anti-cop sentiment of a lot of these protests play a causative factor.</p>
<p><iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dj4ARsxrZh8?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
</p> Eric Holder: Leave the banks alonetag:www.thinkatheist.com,2014-07-20:1982180:Topic:14765882014-07-20T05:36:05.809ZUnseenhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Unseen
<p><em>(Attorney General Holder,) with these settlements you’ve reached, the Justice Department has massively distorted and perverted the notion of accountability until it no longer has meaning. Your recent actions, seen by many observers as reflective of a bold and aggressive new stance, amount to little more than a public relations vehicle. The actual victims of the fraudulent conduct being settled will see no relief. Homeowners will get hurt rather than helped. The perpetrators will not be…</em></p>
<p><em>(Attorney General Holder,) with these settlements you’ve reached, the Justice Department has massively distorted and perverted the notion of accountability until it no longer has meaning. Your recent actions, seen by many observers as reflective of a bold and aggressive new stance, amount to little more than a public relations vehicle. The actual victims of the fraudulent conduct being settled will see no relief. Homeowners will get hurt rather than helped. The perpetrators will not be forced to expose their crimes to the world. Just about the only thing these actions accomplish is a reduction in the national debt, which you can more responsibly achieve by taxing bank executives rather than subjecting their shareholders to penalties.</em></p>
<p><em>Worst of all, these PR moves masquerading as crackdowns do violence to the very concept of justice. In this case, the illusion of accountability is far worse than no accountability at all. </em></p>
<p>(full article <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/07/18/Modest-Proposal-Eric-Holder-Back-Banks" target="_blank">here</a>)</p>
<p></p>
<p></p> Obama approval ratings plummet. Can he crawl out of the ditch? How?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-06-17:1982180:Topic:13284532013-06-17T13:12:13.563ZUnseenhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Unseen
<p>According to today's CNN poll</p>
<p><em>President Barack Obama's approval rating dropped eight percentage points over the past month, to 45%, the president's lowest rating in more than a year and a half, according to a new national poll.</em></p>
<p><em>The CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning comes as the White House has been reacting to controversies over a massive U.S. government surveillance program; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of tea party and other…</em></p>
<p>According to today's CNN poll</p>
<p><em>President Barack Obama's approval rating dropped eight percentage points over the past month, to 45%, the president's lowest rating in more than a year and a half, according to a new national poll.</em></p>
<p><em>The CNN/ORC International survey released Monday morning comes as the White House has been reacting to controversies over a massive U.S. government surveillance program; the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of tea party and other conservative groups who applied for tax-exempt status; the administration's handling of last September's attack in Benghazi that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead; and the Justice Department's secret collection of journalists' phone records as part of a government investigation into classified leaks. </em></p>
<p><em>...</em></p>
<p><em><span>The president's approval rating stands at 45%, down from 53% in mid-May. And 54% say they disapprove of how Obama's handling his job, up nine points from last month. It's the first time in CNN polling since November 2011 that a majority of Americans have had a negative view of the president. </span></em>(<a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/17/cnn-poll-obama-approval-falls-amid-controversies/?hpt=hp_t1" target="_blank">source</a>)</p>
<p>The President has gone through probably the roughest news month since he first assumed the Presidency, what with the allegations of IRS unfairness, seizing records of AP journalists, seizing the records of Fox News reporter James Rosen, allegations of dishonesty in describing the Benghazi embassy attack, and the recent controversy over anti-terrorist data mining of Americans' Internet and telephone activities. </p>
<p>I think Obama has to take swift action or the Dems may be facing a disaster in the upcoming elections. One action</p>
<p>I think it's long overdue to dump Attorney General Holder who seems unnecessarily evasive whenever some sort of scandal pops up and seems to have some role in most of the aforementioned scandals. And let's not even get into his obfuscatory role in the disastrous "Fast and Furious" gun-tracking that went far enough awry that one of the weapons ended up being used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol officer.</p>
<p>His inability to ever accept responsibility for anything is hurting the President. </p>
<p>What do you think the President should do?</p> Is it time for Attorney General Eric Holder to fall on his sword?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-05-29:1982180:Topic:13199982013-05-29T01:09:49.773ZUnseenhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/Unseen
<p>I voted for President Obama and I like him pretty much, bearing in mind several things: 1) no President is going to be able to do everything he said he'd do (there's no such thing as a political promise); 2) the President isn't a king: he can't get what Congress won't give him; 3) no President is going to agree with me on everything (case in point: legalizing marijuana).</p>
<p>Even so, I think it's reached the point where I agree with the mounting chorus of pundits who are saying it's time…</p>
<p>I voted for President Obama and I like him pretty much, bearing in mind several things: 1) no President is going to be able to do everything he said he'd do (there's no such thing as a political promise); 2) the President isn't a king: he can't get what Congress won't give him; 3) no President is going to agree with me on everything (case in point: legalizing marijuana).</p>
<p>Even so, I think it's reached the point where I agree with the mounting chorus of pundits who are saying it's time for Attorney General Eric Holder to fall on his sword and, as the euphemism goes, start spending more time with his family. Obama is notoriously loyal to friends, so it pretty much has to be Holder who reads the tea leaves and realizes things are not going to get better for him and that his mere presence is hurting Obama.</p>
<p>From the disastrous arms "Fast and Furious" program in which government agents sold weapons to Mexican cartel gangsters, one of which guns killed a border patrol agent, to the head-scratching fact that not a single banker has been criminally charged with the financial disaster of the 2008 economic disaster, to the shocking seizure of an AP investigative reporter's phone records and other resources in an effort to uncover his source(s), it's clear that Holder does not make Obama look good.</p>
<p>Of course, one reason for Holder not going is that his replacement would undergo a lengthy grilling allowing Republicans to spend week after week making the same points which, by now, we are very familiar with.</p>
<p>So...is it time for him to go or not?</p>
<p></p> Should we allow drone strikes on American soil?tag:www.thinkatheist.com,2013-03-07:1982180:Topic:12691862013-03-07T06:15:55.947ZSagacious Hawkhttp://www.thinkatheist.com/profile/SagaciousHawk
<p>I'm going to beat Unseen to this one!<br></br><br></br>So Eric Holder in a recent Congressional hearing has left the door open to preforming a drone strike against terrorists on American soil in an "extraordinary circumstance." <br></br><br></br>From <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/politics/obama-drones-cia/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>: <br></br>"Attorney General Eric Holder is not entirely ruling out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says…</p>
<p>I'm going to beat Unseen to this one!<br/><br/>So Eric Holder in a recent Congressional hearing has left the door open to preforming a drone strike against terrorists on American soil in an "extraordinary circumstance." <br/><br/>From <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/politics/obama-drones-cia/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>: <br/>"Attorney General Eric Holder is not entirely ruling out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says it has never been done previously and he could only see it being considered in an extraordinary circumstance.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph2">He began to winnow the list of those possible extraordinary circumstances Wednesday. In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Holder whether he believed it would be constitutional to target an American terror suspect 'sitting at a cafe' if the suspect didn't pose an imminent threat.</p>
<p class="cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph3">'No,' Holder replied."</p>
<p>Given the fact that there are people out there who want to kill us, who want to die for their cause, and who label themselves as an enemy to America, do you think that they Attorney General makes a valid point? Might there be some circumstance where a drone strike is the best option to prevent even more loss of life including that of law enforcement? Is he just plain wrong and this can't be permitted at all? As Senator Paul is now filibustering on the Senate floor and making the point, is there zero room for a lethal military/law enforcement drone strike on an individual? Might there still be a comparison with the use of lethal force by a police officer to a person that is known to be armed, dangerous, and looking to kill?</p>